Astronomers See Solar System Being Born
U.S. astronomers say they’ve observed a young star with a rotating dust disk considered the youngest still-forming planetary system ever found. The infant star surrounded by a swirling disk of dust and gas is more than 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory reported.
While just one-fifth the mass of the sun, it will probably pull in material from its surroundings and eventually match the sun’s mass, scientists said. The disk of material surrounding the young star contains at least enough mass to make seven planets the size of our solar system’s largest world Jupiter, they said.